Dulio12385 wrote:Played a few rounds on Skirmish For SM's it seems that their greatest Achilles' heel is their greatly attenuated sensor radius. If MWJ is auto-include for IN, Augur Probe is it for SM fleet since their principal weapons, the Thundrhawk and the Boarding Torps, are so heavily dependent on identifying enemies, unless you are willing spring for lots and lots of escorts which also works.

I hope the Tau will be the inverse of this because while the SM have good armor and guns for cc to compensate for their short range sensors, Tau are the very definition of the kiting fleet. Their entire arsenal is crippled if they have no sensor lock.

Not just AP needing a change, the whole marine DLC is pretty much junk. I really can't believe this faction design made it thru playtest to release. The vanguard light cruiser is a joke. It has the same broadside as an escort. It can't strip a shield to save it's live and it can't survive more than one run a boarding distance because of low health and shield, all for the price of an actual useful ship like the hellbringer class. One on one an unupgraded carrier hellbring will wipe the floor with a vanguard.

Strike cruisers follow the stats of table top pretty well, unfortunately this isn't table top! (if it were, I'd be a happy camper, no more junk like bombs and crits wouldn't actually dominate the game) We're talking something with similar stats to a dauntless, with less dps in game, for the price of a lunar or slaughter. Either ship will blow a SC out of the sky no problem. Not what I call balance....

There are no actual cruiser slots or battlecruiser slots. Look at what was done with eldar, chaos and orks. Devs actually created ship designs to fill in the holes in their rosters, and pretty successfully too. Heck even this last patch had even more options released for the eldar. Did the devs get lazy or time crunched when it came time to create the SM line up? The shoe horning of ships into classes the don't belong in just does not work!

The only ship that's even close to being done correctly is the battlebarge, but whoops, that was pointed too high by 4 and 9 points so it can't be used in 2v2! Granted SM can have 2 BB's on the roster, and 2 would be used because they are the only ships that don't die when someone looks at them funny. Also you're stuck having to grind thru 6 levels with sub par ships until you have something that's even close to being useful.

Also the design idea of most of the dps for SM to come from boarding is uninspired and not fun to play. Instead of being a faction that could get close, have gunfire and boarding, we have a faction that has to sit back, kite and launch wave after wave of boarding torps. It's boring as crap to play and frustrating to play against.

Really for the work and promise that went into the original release and factions, the SM's are poor bloody work.

Dulio12385 wrote:Played a few rounds on Skirmish For SM's it seems that their greatest Achilles' heel is their greatly attenuated sensor radius. If MWJ is auto-include for IN, Augur Probe is it for SM fleet since their principal weapons, the Thundrhawk and the Boarding Torps, are so heavily dependent on identifying enemies, unless you are willing spring for lots and lots of escorts which also works.

On the strike cruisers I use the augur beacons, that way after you get back out of range you can still have them in a detection radius. I use the probes on the vanguards.

Only two things i'm iffy about: The homing boarding torpedos are just too good to not use them. Making lances a little more viable wouldn't do a miss. Also they're a bit too reliant on ramming for my taste. Ramming is fun, but it takes away from the feeling of accomplishment if space marine fights basically end up in moshpits where the RNG decides the outcome.

And of course, due to the low hp they suffer especially from the state of the pulsar. Other then that i don't feel like they're hugely affected by AP. Chaos lance setups are very very icky as space marine, but i would spend a little more time with those engagements before calling for a change.

Imperator5 wrote:Honestly AP macros are not a problem. If you get that close to an SM ship you'll get a boarding action to the face.

AP lances and pulsars are the problem. If they reduced SM armour to 50, it would be better.

that is a general problem with the game. AP upgrade should just reduce armroby 25 points. Lances on other hand have lower base DPS so I think they could stay as they are and we see how thigns go with only an AP macro nerf.

It boggles my ming why would the devs make space marine fighters a skill you have to purchase. Not only it takes up a valuable slot it is also not affected by automated refueling system. More importantly, it does not depend on the amount of launch bays, so even a battle barge can have only one squaron. This makes your ships extremely vulnerable to any dedicated carrier fleet because you can never have sufficent protection and you trade off a skill if you try. I mean, a barge can deploy 9 thunderhawks which are like baneblade-sized aircraft with massive amount of weaponry and survivability, but puny stormhawks? Nah, too expencive, so you only get 6 end even then you gotta pay prime to even have them.Lances and pulsars just add insult to injury.

Ironhide wrote:You all do realize that the Vanguard is basically a ultra-light cruiser? It is basically supposed to be a Heavy Frigate used for recon duties in fleet-based chapters.

In the TT game, the SM Strike Cruiser had the hitpoints of a light cruiser; so it isn't exactly in the same weight class as an actual cruiser.

Yet both seem to perform rather well IMO.

Actually the Vanguard is just a refitted version of the regular strike cruiser designed for longer range operations and trading offensive power for defence turrets and better engines. By rights its in the same weight class as the strike cruiser, but the devs decided to shrink it down from a light cruiser to a corvette.

I can see why its been done, otherwise the space marine lineup would've just been two light cruisers and a battleship, and I'm generally pleased with how they perform (although I think the strike cruiser's broadside should return to its previous state, its all well and good the devs saying they're trying to bring it in line with the TT, but that only works if they do that for everyone)

Perturabo-Liberal wrote:It boggles my ming why would the devs make space marine fighters a skill you have to purchase.

Yea, that one is quite stupid. It scales okay if you just have a single bay but for a BB it is a worthless screen that makes you open wide for literally anything that flies at your direction at the cost of "wasting" a skill. There should be at last 1 fighter wing per pay and even then it would just be a screen of 3 wings that is still worse than all the other BB carriers.